Agents
The agents are the computational representation of some specific social actors – individual people or animals, organisations such as firms or bodies such nationstates – capable of interacting, that is, they can pass informational messages to each other and act on the basis of what they learn from these messages. Thus, each agent in the model is an autonomous entity. (Salgado&Gilbert, 2013).
Introduction
Characteristics of agents according to
Macal and North:
1. An agent is identifiable (discrete)
2. An agent is situated in an environment
with which it interacts
3. Agents are heterogeneous
4. An agent is goal-directed
5. an agent is autonomous and selfdirected (can function independently)
6. An agent is flexible, can learn, to adapt its behavior.
Characteristics of agents (Nigel Gilbert):
1. Agents perceive their environment
2. Agents have behavior: Motion, Communication (other agents) Action (interaction with environment)
3. Memory
4. Policy (rules that determine which behavior to perform)
Agent characteristic:
- self-contained: can distinguish from another agent, able to determine something is part of an agent or not.
- autonomous : make decision based on information
- have a state: varies over time, determine behaviour
- social : interact
Explanation
Framework Agent: attributes(static and dynamic) and behaviour.
Agent heterogeneity :can cause different states and value range because of attributes
Examples
-
Social:
- Individuals in a crowd
- Voters
-
Economic:
- Consumers in a market
- Firms in an industry
-
Biological:
- Animals
- Cells
-
Transportation:
- Vehicles in a traffic
- Transportation agents in logistics
-
Multi-Agent Systems:
- Software agents in a distributed system
- Autonomous robots in a swarm
Book: Introduction to the Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems (Sayama).
Outgoing relations
- Agents is a feature of Agent based modelling
Incoming relations
- Agent behaviour is a feature of Agents
- Agent can perceive an environment is a feature of Agents
- Agents are heterogeneous is a feature of Agents
- Agents can be connected to other agents via social networks. is a feature of Agents
- Agents Communicate is a feature of Agents
- Agent-Agent Interaction is part of Agents
Contributors
- Maria Perez